Mobile layers of 2015 Copenhagen shooting: sounds, witnesses, and tweets @FEMENINNA

Abstract

The article examines the case of the terrorist attack on a free speech event hosted at Krudttønden café in Copenhagen on 14 February 2015, exactly at the time when Femen’s leading activist Inna Shevchenko was delivering her speech on the illusion of free speech in Europe. I focus on the intersections of sound, feminine vulnerability, mediatized support, and transformations of Femen activism network within layered and interlaced networks. Guided by the concept of Badiou’s event, the article offers the perspective of Shevchenko’s ‘evental’ activism, which stands out with its instantaneous switch from usual Femen-disapproving rhetoric to the rhetoric of support for Femen and its terrorist-attack survived leader in particular. The fact that Shevchenko not only witnessed and survived the attack but also became a popular spokesperson for the event and the issue of free expression signposts a major transformation of Femen activism and brings into the light larger cultural phenomenon. The article argues that the mediatized perception of intense and immediate fears helps level out of the smaller cultural and aesthetic differences at the expense of creating new ‘us versus them’ division accompanied by the discussions attempting to counteract it.